On the Night Train to Union Station

By A.E. Bayne

On the night train to Union Station
I dissect your call,
the phone tethered to the wall via a snaking umbilical cord that binds us well.
“He’s dying,” you cried into space.
I responded with my center twisted tight as a giant cat’s thigh before the leap,
wound spring sprung.
Now the damp night oozes into the car
and I have lost reception on this track,
So I wait with nerves cranked ‘round the wheel
watching the rain strike the unnaturally flat plate windows.
We speed onward, racing the chill, killing the cold,
And when we arrive, there you are -
apparition, mostly ghost,
solemn, but casting your arms out to us.
Rushing, we cry, “we’re here,” and “if only for some other reason,”
and “how is he?”
You slay the prowling tiger when you say he died not an hour ago.
Did he know; did he know?